Future's End (episode)
After encountering a Federation timeship from the future, Voyager is flung back to 20th century Earth. Summary The encounters an artificially generated graviton disruption, from which the 29th century timeship ''Aeon'' emerges, firing on Voyager. The pilot of the timeship, Captain Braxton, claims that Voyager will be responsible for a temporal explosion in the 29th century that will destroy the entire solar system. Captain Kathryn Janeway responds with force to calm Braxton and eventually Voyager overpowers the timeship, causing Braxton to lose control of it. The graviton field begins to collapse and both ships are pulled in. Voyager finds itself in orbit around Earth, but in the 20th century, 1996. Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, Lieutenant commander Tuvok, and Lt. jg Tom Paris transport to the surface, where they have detected some unusual readings near Los Angeles, leaving Ensign Harry Kim in command. A young woman named Rain Robinson has been hired by Henry Starling to watch for a certain kind of radiation (gamma radiation from Voyager s nacelles, although she doesn't know it). She reports her findings to Starling but is told not to reveal her discovery to anyone else. When she finds the radiation, Voyager receives a standard SETI greeting from Rain's Observatory. In response, Tuvok and Tom Paris are sent to find whatever information she has gathered and destroy it. Rain catches them in her office but all three are then forced to flee the observatory when Starling's assistant, Dunbar, attempts to vaporize them because Rain ended up telling one of her friends about her discovery. Janeway and Chakotay follow a homeless man, who turns out to be Captain Braxton. Braxton explains that he was trapped on Earth 30 years ago, when his timeship crashed in the mountains. He was unable to reach the ship in time and instead it was found by Henry Starling, who began exploiting its 29th-century technology, beginning the microcomputer revolution of the 20th century on Earth. Janeway and Chakotay break into Starling's office and begin downloading his database, hoping to find where the timeship is being kept, just as Starling walks in. He threatens them and orders Kim to abort the download. Kim knows the captain is in trouble, but because the transporters were damaged by the rift, he orders the ship into low orbit for emergency transport, rescuing Janeway and Chakotay. As Voyager flies by, they attempt to transport the timeship onboard as well. Starling blocks their attempts and uses their transporter to download over 20% of Voyager s Database, including The Doctor, who appears in Starling's office. Unfortunately, Voyager is spotted by someone videotaping a backyard barbecue and the footage is seen by television viewers across the United States of America [[Future's End, Part II (episode)|''TO BE CONTINUED...]] Log Entries *''Operations Officer's log, supplemental. We've been on full sensor alert, looking for signs that anyone else has detected Voyager. As a precaution, I've also asked Neelix and Kes to monitor all media broadcasts. '' Memorable Quotes "''Far out." : - Henry Starling, after the Aeon crashes in the High Sierras "We could've worn our Starfleet uniforms. I doubt if anyone would've noticed." : - Tuvok on the fashions worn by the late 20th-century inhabitants of Los Angeles. "Come on, take off your shirt." "And risk dermal dysplasia? No, thank you." "Aww, Vulcans. Deep down you're all a bunch of hypochondriacs." : - Paris and Tuvok, discussing the California sunshine "It's crap. The component density is too low, the voltage variance is out of spec, and I don't even like the color!" : - Henry Starling, appraising a new chip designed by his company "At first I thought it was a warp core implosion...But, then, someone here stole my time ship...then it started to dawn on me. If someone were to fly my timeship into the future, without re-calibrating the temporal matrix, that could cause the kind of explosion that I witnessed in the 29th century!" : - Captain Braxton, explaining the temporal explosion to Captain Janeway and Chakotay "You stay right where you are...you quasi-Cardassian totalitarian!" : - Captain Braxton, insulting a police officer "Your curves don't look so great." : - Tom Paris, on Rain Robinson's Fourier analysis "Who are you, and what's that thing in your pants?" "I beg your pardon?" : - Rain Robinson and Tuvok, referring to a tricorder Rain saw Tuvok hide in his pants. "Nobody will know the difference!" "I'll know, Sharon! He's my brother! How can I face him, knowing that ''our son...is his son?" "''All you need to know, Jack, is that I love you." : - Excerpt from Neelix and Kes' soap operas. "What does it mean, "groovy"?" : - Tuvok, to Tom Paris "Time travel. Ever since my first day in the job as a Starfleet Captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these god-forsaken paradoxes. The future is the past, the past is the future. It all gives me a headache." : - Janeway to Chakotay at Starling's computer. "Stop, or I'll kill your captain." "Who is this?" "You've got five seconds!" : - Henry Starling, threatening Harry Kim "I've got a starship in orbit that can destroy this building." Chortles "And you with it!" "If necessary." "Captain . . . you've got some ''cojones." : - '''Janeway' and Starling "Ensign Kim, you have an impeccable sense of timing. Not bad for your first day in the Big Chair." : - Janeway to Kim after he rescues Janeway and Chakotay from where they are being held hostage "USS Voyager, Intrepid Class, much bigger than I expected and much less advanced. Says here your ship was launched in the year...2371? You're from the 24th century? And here all this time I thought you were from the 29th. Looks like I have the home field advantage." : - Henry Starling to Captain Janeway Background Information Story and Production * This episode begins the second two-parter in Star Trek: Voyager s run, after and , the two-parter that bridges the series' second and third seasons. * Despite being credited to Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, this episode's two-parter, according to Braga, also involved the input of other writers of Voyager s writing staff. "It was really a group effort," Braga explained. "It was me and Rick [Berman] and Joe Menosky and the group of writers we had there, at that time. We all had a lot of things we wanted to do." (Braving the Unknown: Season Three, VOY Season 3 DVD special features) As such, this episode's two-parter was the first to be written by committee. (Departing executive producer Michael Piller had penned the "Basics" duology.) * Brannon Braga was intent on using this episode's two-parter to set a trend. He recalled, "One of the things I ''knew I wanted to do was... I got this crazy idea in my head that we would do, we would make it a tradition to do great, epic two-part episodes." (''Braving the Unknown: Season Three, VOY Season 3 DVD special features) Braga also stated, "Voyager started its turnaround for us, personally and creatively, when we did the very first two-parter because we said to ourselves let's start having fun. What's fun to write is fun to watch and we've been toiling with the Maquis storyline and we've been having these angst-ridden characters deal with being lost and it's not much fun to write anymore and we felt that it couldn't possibly be all that fun to watch. Let's let it all hang out and do something insane... What seemed more insane back then – but if you hear about it now it sounds ridiculously antiquated – ''Voyager in 1996! And we conceived of big action sequences and big concepts with an epic villain .... Things that we never would have thought of even attempting on ''The Next Generation'' or in the early days of Voyager. It's crazy, but we did it and we pulled it off and it was a charming, fun episode." (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) In summation, Braga remarked, "''I think, after the first two-parter we did together – which was a time travel show, I think, called 'Future's End' – it was just so much fun to paint on a bigger canvas." (Braving the Unknown: Season Three, VOY Season 3 DVD special features) * Brannon Braga was ultimately very proud of the creation of the Henry Starling character. "Henry Starling was our first great ''Voyager villain," Braga declared. "''It sounds like a pat on the back, but I think we created great single individual villains and that was the first one, played by Ed Begley Jr.." (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) * In fact, Ed Begley, Jr. was one of Hollywood's most notable environmental activists. Executive producer Rick Berman remarked, "Who better to play a man willing to destroy the environment of the solar system than the most committed conservationist in Hollywood?" (Star Trek Monthly issue 22) * This is the first episode when Roxann Dawson removed the "Biggs" part of her name from her acting credit, formally announcing her divorce from Casey Biggs (who was featured on DS9 as Gul Damar). * Filming for this two-part episode included five days of location shoots around Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory exteriors being filmed on . (''Star Trek Magazine'' issue 143) Another location used was the Santa Monica Pier. (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) * Partly due to this episode's location work, the episode was a favorite amongst the cast and crew, especially Tim Russ: "I'd have to say that 'Future's End' was the most fun episode to shoot. Those were two great weeks. We were outside the studio. We were in the city. We were running around all over the place, different locations and that's just a blast because shooting inside gets to be kind of boring sometimes. It was a great story. It was a great two-parter and it was just a lot of fun to shoot that episode." (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) Russ also said of this episode's duology, "Those two shows are one of my favorites because the concept, again, the story's great. Time travel's always fun. But what's even more fun is to be able to go to the beach and work. I enjoy doing that. I mean, I kind of miss it because the shows I worked on prior to that, we were always on location. So, we were ''always at different places all the time, which gives you, you know, you don't get tired of it. There's something that's always a new challenge, a new space to work in. We had a dozen locations, and we could play in those environments in a different period in time. It was fun, it was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed that tremendously." (''Braving the Unknown: Season Three, VOY Season 3 DVD special features) * The visual effects team were also required to visit several locations in Los Angeles, to capture shots of such sights as the exterior of Chronowerx headquarters and the timeship bay that is, according to the story, inside that building. Visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore recalled, "We went out and shot background plates. I enjoyed doing this ... because I was able to bring out my old 4" x 5" camera from school and shoot a lot of stills on big 4" x 5" negative. Then we could go in and manipulate the buildings. We did the Transit Building, downtown L.A. It became the Chronowerx building .... We looked all over. story includes a place where we were up in Starling's office and he looks down, and you can see the timeship inside. We tried to get into TRW, which we thought was cool because they shot some of the original series there. I thought it would be fun to go back down, but we couldn't find a place that we liked that they would let us shoot in. So, we finally found a place down in Long Beach where we went in, and it was just this real high-tech.... Outdated for that, I guess, but we had lots of wires and pipes and big tanks and stuff. And Dan [Curry] and I went out with still cameras and shot all of this, and then we took ''it back and then added CG ships, and what-have-you, to that." (Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects'', VOY Season 3 DVD special features) Continuity & Trivia * This episode marks the first mention of a future Starfleet that monitors and repairs the timeline. In this case, it is the 29th century Starfleet using a timeship. As is established in , timeships exist as part of Starfleet beginning in the 26th century if not sooner. However, all mentions prior to this episode pertain only to Federation historians using the ships to study the past. The earlier-produced establishes that, as of at least 2373, a unit known as the Department of Temporal Investigations exists as part of the United Federation of Planets, for purposes of investigating and reporting on all incidents of time travel involving Federation citizens. This department may very well have been the precursor, in Star Trek s chronology, to the 29th century Starfleet depicted in this episode. * The cockpit of the Aeon would later be reused as the cockpit of an Entharan starship in and as Kes's starship in . * In this episode, Voyager s crew discovers that they are in the past because they cannot pick up Starfleet signals, but are receiving radio transmissions. The same occurrence helps Captain Kirk and his crew determine that they are in the past in the episode . * Although this two-part story is mostly set in 1996, there is no allusion made to the Eugenics Wars which, according to both and , took place at this time. Prior to this episode's first airing, co-executive producer Jeri Taylor told a convention audience, "I think that those of us who entered into the Nineties realise the Eugenics Wars simply aren't happening and we writers chose not to falsify our present, which is a very weird thing to do to be true to it." (Star Trek Monthly issue 22) Furthermore, in an audio commentary for , co-writer Brannon Braga states that it was decided not to have the Eugenics Wars in this episode because "it would just be kind of strange." However, the DS9 episode (produced soon after this one) mentions the wars as having taken place in the 22nd century and not the 20th century, which may account for the wars' exclusion from this episode's two-parter (although writer Ronald D. Moore himself admitted that the DS9 episode's dating of the wars was an error on his part). * Despite no explicit allusion to the Eugenics Wars here, Rain Robinson has a toy model of the near her window and a photograph – stuck to a filing cabinet in her office – that depicts the same sleeper ship's launch; the Botany Bay is established, in "Space Seed" and Star Trek II, as having been launched very soon after the Eugenics Wars. Rain also has, on her desk, a Talosian action figure, which was released as part of the Star Trek 30th anniversary line-up from Playmates Toys. * There's a very subtle gag in this episode involving the communicators. Right after Harry receives the "Greeting from Earth" message from Rain Robinson, he proceeds to contact the away team on the surface. As the captain's communicator beeps, all of the native Angelenos walking past the away team immediately reach for their cellphones to answer them. * The policeman who chases the homeless Braxton reports his police unit as "2-47 Baker." Furthermore, when Rain's computer crashes, it displays a Fatal System Error #00'47'. * Although this episode contains no direct references to (which is set only ten years prior to it), Tuvok's question to Tom Paris as they exit the observatory, "What does it mean, 'groovy'?", is very similar to a question that Spock asks James T. Kirk after they are ejected from a bus in that film: "What does it mean, 'exact change'?" * Janeway refers to late 1990s computer technology as "stone knives and bearskins". In , Spock makes the same analogy when referring to the technology of the 1930s. * This episode has the only mention of the word "teleport" anywhere in the Star Trek franchise, when Starling exclaims, "They are trying to teleport the ship!" * Captain Janeway's hair bun makes its last regular appearance in this episode. However, it would be seen again in four subsequent episodes with scenes set either in a holodeck simulation or in 2371 as a result of time travel: , , and . * Janeway's new regular hairdo, a hair-clipped ponytail, makes its first appearance here. This hairdo will remain for a year, until Season 4's first two-parter of the season, and . For the remainder of the third season, Janeway wears a different style, shape and color of hair-clip. In the fourth season, she alternates between previously seen hair-clips, until the appearance of her short hairstyle in the "Year of Hell" two-parter. Reception * Shortly before this episode's first airing, Jeri Taylor said of the episode's duology, "We're all very excited about it, it's gotten a lot of good 'buzz', and we think it will be a great two-parter." (Star Trek Monthly issue 20) After but in the same week as the episode's initial broadcast, she commented that the installment "did spectacularly well." She also related that the success of the character dynamic between Tuvok and Paris here did not go unnoticed and that their relationship would continue to progress along those lines in subsequent episodes. (Star Trek Monthly issue 23) * This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series. Video and DVD releases * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 3.4, . * In feature-length form, as part of the UK VHS release Star Trek: Voyager - Movies: Volume 1 (with "Basics"), . * As part of the VOY Season 3 DVD collection. Links and References Main Cast *Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway *Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay *Roxann Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres *Jennifer Lien as Kes *Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris *Ethan Phillips as Neelix *Robert Picardo as The Doctor *Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok *Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim Guest Stars *Sarah Silverman as Rain Robinson *Allan G. Royal as Braxton Special Guest Star *Ed Begley, Jr. as Henry Starling Co-Stars *Susan Patterson as Ensign Kaplan *Barry Wiggins as Policeman *Christian R. Conrad as Dunbar Uncredited Co-Stars *Tarik Ergin as Ayala *Jennifer Somers as a science division officer *Unknown performers as **Dave (voice) **Jim **Uncle Sam **Surfers Stunt doubles *Unknown stunt performers as **Stunt double for Sarah Silverman **Stunt double for Tim Russ References Action figure; Aeon ( ); Arizona; astrophysics; "B" movie; Barstow; Benetton; Blaine; Bride of the Corpse; California; Caltech; Cardassian; cellular phone; champagne; Chateau Coeur; chronometric data; Chronowerx Industries; coffeemaker; computer; DY-100 class; Earth; Edsel; e-mail; E.T.; Fourier spectral analysis; force field; gamma emission; gigabyte; graviton matrix; Griffith Observatory; groovy; Halley's Comet; hard drive; Hermosa Earthquake; high school; High Sierras; Hollywood; Hot Dog on a Stick; Howdy Doody; HyperPro PC; isograted circuit; JPL; Jack; Jessica; KGB; Lada; laser; lava lamp; Los Angeles; Mars; meteorite; moon; motorcycle; Orgy of the Walking Dead; paradox; philanthropist; pinball; pizza; polaron; Punk; RADAR; radio; Santa Cruz; Santa Monica; satellite; Saturn; science fiction; secret agent; SETI; SETI greeting; Sharon; soda; soap opera; Soviet Union; Soviet spy satellite; space-time continuum; Starfleet Academy; stone knives and bearskins; subatomic disruptor; Talosian; taxicab; telephone; telescope; temporal matrix; temporal rift; tennis; thermal radiation; theta band filter; transporter; transtator; tricorder; truck; Turn-of-the-Millennium Technology; Twinlab; 247-Baker; UFO; ultraviolet radiation; Uncle Sam's Psychic Readings; United States of America; USSR; weather balloon |next= }} de:Vor dem Ende der Zukunft, Teil I es:Future's End, Part I nl:Future's End, Deel I Category:VOY episodes